NYT has a history of hiring engineering rockstars. I believe creators of libraries like BackboneJS, UnderscoreJS, and D3 were at NYT when they had invented those amazing pieces of work.
In fact, the creator of Backbone and Underscore — Jeremy Ashkenas — worked on this article until he left the NYT last year (to join the creator of D3, Mike Bostock, at https://observablehq.com)